


You'll Know Her When You See Her

by wheel_pen



Series: Lucy [6]
Category: Smallville, The West Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, President Lex Luthor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-22
Updated: 2013-04-22
Packaged: 2017-12-09 06:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/770822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucy goes to visit her mom in Metropolis but they part ways quickly, so she calls Lex. Who suggests she come out to a club with him. This story is unfinished.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You'll Know Her When You See Her

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Lucy, my original character, is Clark’s cousin on the Kent side. Although human she may have some strange psychic powers and definitely has some issues in her past. She’s having a tough time with her mom and goes to live with Jonathan and Martha for a while. She and Lex form a relationship.
> 
> 2\. In my world, Lex eventually becomes President. And his staff is from The West Wing. 
> 
> 3\. I started writing this series during the third season of Smallville, so it diverges from canon then or earlier.
> 
> 4\. Underage warning: This story may contain human or human-like teenagers, in high school, in sexual situations.
> 
> 5\. The bad words are censored. That’s just how I do things.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this AU. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play in this universe.

            Lex was having a _great_ evening. He was sitting on a couch in the VIP section of one of the most exclusive nightclubs in Metropolis, his brain buzzing with the ear-shattering music and the rather large quantity of Scotch he’d consumed. On one side was a ravishing redhead in a very short skirt, who seemed extremely pleased that his hand was on her thigh and his tongue was in her mouth. On his other side was her _very good friend_ , a brunette in a see-through blouse who was toying with his shirt buttons and brandishing a bag of alluring little white pills. Oh yes, a _great_ evening, just like the old times he used to have before he came to Smallville (only perhaps not _quite_ so destructive this time). Of course, in a couple days he was going back there, back to the c—p factory and the castle, back to his friends (all both of them) and his employees and his acquaintances. But a guy deserved a little vacation every once in a while.

            He was just trying to decide whether he should take a little white pill now or wait until he got back to… wherever with his two old acquaintances—it was so nice to catch up with people you hadn’t seen in a while—when his cell phone rang. He was surprised he could hear it over the pounding industrial rock blaring out of the speakers, but the tinny, high-pitched tone seemed specifically designed to cut through any background noise.

            “Your phone’s ringing,” Clarissa pointed out helpfully, as Lex licked his way down her neck.

            “Ignore it,” he suggested. “It’s probably just my father.” She laughed at that. She knew his father.

            “Hey, does your dad go by the name Lucy?” Elisa asked dully. She’d had a few little white pills already this evening.

            Lex turned to her so fast Clarissa’s tongue was still hanging out. The brunette had apparently dug his cell phone out of his pocket when he thought she was after… something else, and she was staring at the caller ID display. He snatched the phone back from her and squinted at the letters himself: LUCY CELL.

            Well, f—k.

            Maybe it was nothing. Probably it was nothing. But he at least had to check. Lex flipped the phone open to answer it.

            “Lucy?”

            “Hey, Lex!” She sounded alright, not like she was bleeding to death on a street corner or something. “Where are you?”

            Sitting directly under a speaker, that’s where. He regretfully pushed himself off the couch and wandered over to the private bar a few steps away. Elisa moved in to keep his seat warm for him. Lex decided he should turn his back on the couch if he wanted to have a coherent conversation. “I’m at a club. In Metropolis,” he told her, somewhat pointedly. Not that he was irritated with her for calling. But if she was standing outside the mansion ringing the doorbell, she should know up front he wasn’t going to answer.

            “Oh.” She seemed disappointed. “Well, it’s nothing, I don’t mean to interrupt you.”

            “That’s okay,” he assured her hastily. There were two gorgeous women necking on the couch behind him. They were waiting for him to join them. But he was leaning on the bar, not drinking, and talking to a sixteen-year-old on his phone. “Okay” was perhaps an overstatement. But not as much of one as he would have thought. “Where are you?”

            “I’m in a cab.”

            He thought he’d heard her wrong. “What?”

            “I’m in a cab, in Metropolis.”

            He paused to think about that. “Why?”

            “Lex, you dope!” she chastised lightly. “I came up to Metropolis this weekend to visit my mom. I told you about it.”

            The details were vague. He remembered that his father had called and ordered him up to the city for a Friday morning meeting. Then he had had some nice brandy paid for with his father’s expense account, to take the edge off being summoned to the board room like a child going to the principal’s office. Then Lucy had come in and was talking, and her shirt was yellow plaid. And the top three buttons were undone. Perhaps she had indeed said something about her mother. He couldn’t be sure. Especially not at the moment.

            Something else was not making sense. “Is your mom with you?” he asked in confusion. This drew an odd look from the bartender. He must not have worked here long.

            “Well…” She sounded hesitant. “Actually I kind of got sick of her. So I took off for a cab ride.”

            Lex looked at his watch. “It’s not even midnight on Friday, Lucy,” he pointed out. “Didn’t you just get there a few hours ago?”

            “Yeah.” Great, rub it in, Lex, he told himself when he heard her tone. “She had a date, so…”

            He restrained himself from commenting, “She had a date? When she knew you were coming to see her?” because that would just have been stupid. And he wasn’t _that_ drunk yet. “You shouldn’t be out by yourself this late, Lucy.”

            “I’m not by myself.”

            Because a random cab driver really made a great chaperone. “Where are you? In the cab, I mean.”

            She consulted the driver. “Fourth Street,” she informed him. “Just past Essex.”

            A little voice told Lex that the idea which had popped into his head was not a good one. He had been ignoring that little voice all night, however, so he merely flicked it back into a corner and replied, “I’m just on Third and Montreux. Come join me.”

            “At a _nightclub_?” She paused to consider. “Would I like it?”

            “Well.” Lex glanced around, as if anything had changed in the last few minutes. Nope, Clarissa and Elisa were still making out on the couch. “It’s hot, crowded, noisy, and full of strangers doing drugs and having sex with each other. So, probably not.”

            She laughed. “Yeah, it’s not really my kind of place.”

            It was _his_ kind of place. He had been to many, many kinds of places like this. Everyone was very rich and/or very good-looking, and very bribable. He was _king_ of this kind of place. Perhaps Elisa had already slipped one of those little white pills into his last drink? What else could explain the perfect rationality of his next—

            “Come join me anyway. We’ll have a drink. I’ll have a drink,” he corrected. “Then we’ll go… eat something.”

            “Are you serious?”

            Sex and chemical experimentation with two beautiful women. No sex and hamburgers with a teenager. “Absolutely. Someone has to look after you.”

            She giggled. “Are you—on something?” She made the idea sound delightfully naughty.

            “I think that’s becoming more and more evident,” he admitted. Lex tried to sound very serious and responsible. “Come join me, Lucy. It’ll be alright.”

            “Well…” She thought it over. “Okay. Where did you say you were?”

            “It’s called Liquid Blue. Third and Montreux. You’ll know it by the crowd of poseurs at the door.”

            “We get Snobby Drunk Lex tonight, huh?” she asked cheerfully.

            “D—n right.”

            “Okay. I’ll be there in a minute.”

            “Hang on, hang on, hang on,” he insisted, before she could hang up. “What are you wearing?”

            “Lex!” Lucy protested in exasperation.

            “I have to describe you to the bouncers,” he told her, his tone purposefully patronizing. “What did you think I meant, Lucy?”

            He pictured her rolling her eyes at him. “Denim jumper, white long-sleeve t-shirt, and… I have my Smallville sweatshirt, too.”

            Yeah, she would stick out a bit. But that was the point, wasn’t it? If you looked just like everyone else, that’s how you were treated. The little voice pointed out that Lex’s distinguishing features and Lucy’s high school sweatshirt weren’t exactly in the same category of “standing out,” but he shoved some caramel in the little voice’s mouth and locked it in a closet. “Okay. I’ll see you in a minute.” Definitely a white pill or two.

            “Okay.”

            He hung up. He turned back to the couch. Clarissa and Elisa looked up at him expectantly. “Maybe next time, girls,” he told them. “Nice to see you again.” He took off down the stairs that led to the main floor. That wasn’t really as hard as he’d thought. Bad choice of words. That really wasn’t as difficult as he’d thought. Clarissa had a tendency to smell and taste like someone else’s cheap cologne anyway… and Elisa’s major asset was that she would do whatever Clarissa told her to. Which was a great attribute, of course, but one got bored with it after a while. At least, one _theoretically_ could get bored. After a very long while.

            But he was on the main floor now, toned bodies barely wearing expensive scraps of cloth gyrating around him, and there was one person he really needed to talk to. “Dom!” he called out when he spotted him, and the tall, dark-skinned man actually heard him over the din. It took years of practice to achieve that kind of hearing.

            “Lex. What can I do for you?” Some of these rich kids were obnoxious and surprisingly tight-fisted. Lex, although frequently obnoxious in his younger days, had always been generous. That kind of attitude elicited a much faster response from most security personnel.

            Lex stared up at the powerfully built man, six-foot-four without the combat boots, and didn’t bat an eyelash. Dom was another old acquaintance, even more reliable than Clarissa. “I need you to let somebody in for me.” Lex was already reaching for his wallet.

            “Sure thing,” Dom answered with a shrug. Didn’t make much difference to _him_ who ended up on the floor. Although if they stayed _upright_ while on the floor, that was much less of a problem. “Who is it?”

            Lex smirked at him. That smirk usually meant _more_ of a problem. “Farm girl,” he replied. “I think you’ll know her when you see her.” He slipped some expertly-folded bills into Dom’s hand. A true professional, the taller man didn’t look at them. “I don’t want her hassled. I’ll be waiting at the bar.”

            Dom nodded and waited until Lex turned away before checking the contents of his hand. Three crisp hundred-dollar bills. Three times more than what Lex used to give him to get into places like this when he was just eighteen. This could also mean _more_ of a problem.

            A couple minutes later Dom was standing at the door, ignoring the crowd of aspiring models and trust-fund-baby-wannabes who filled the entrance, clamoring that they just _had_ to get on the other side. Fortunately, his fellow bouncer Fat Joe almost filled the entrance himself, so Dom could keep an eye out for—

            S—t.

            Yeah, Lex hadn’t been lying when he said Dom would know her when he saw her. He understood the three hundred dollars now. He was beginning to think it wasn’t enough.

            It wasn’t that she was young. Dom knew for a fact that he’d let a thirteen-year-old in the club before, since she was his roommate’s cousin and all. But that girl sure as h—l didn’t _look_ like a thirteen-year-old. She had looked like most of the skinny, well-dressed, well-made-up youngish women milling around on the sidewalk, offering the bouncers folded cash and alluring promises and empty threats. You wouldn’t have even known she was thirteen unless you got a really good look at her. This girl? She had pigtails, denim, and a sweatshirt that said “Smallville High” tied around her waist. No make-up even. All she was missing was a teddy bear and a tractor.

            Fat Joe spotted her, chuckled, and nudged Dom to point her out. A number of the people on the sidewalk were staring at her, too, especially since she didn’t seem to know what she should do, other than stand there. But Dom had a job to do. Er, he had a job to do for _Lex_. “Hey, farm girl!” She did a little “me?” gesture that had the oh-so-sophisticated crowd around her rolling their eyes. “Yeah, you. Come on.”

 

 

_The next day…_

            “What?”

            “Lex!”

            Great, just who he wanted a phone call from when he was slightly hungover—his not-so-favorite stool pigeon. “Roger. You’re calling me because?”

            There was a smirk in his tone Lex could hear through the phone. “Just wanted to ask if you were enjoying your weekend in the city,” the journalist continued.

            Lex frowned. “How did you know I was— _S—t_.” Realization hit.

            Nixon was triumphant again. “You gotta be more discreet, Lex, buddy,” the older man advised in that smarmy tone of voice. “Good thing I’m here lookin’ out for you.”

            Lex sighed and dropped in a chair. “Isn’t it a little early for the incriminating evidence to be coming in?”

            “Digital cameras, Lex,” Nixon pointed out. “Instant gratification. Instant cash.” His tone hinted.

            Lex bit the bullet. “How much?”

            “Oh… twenty grand.”

            Lex raised an eyebrow. “Roger, if you had photos _worth_ twenty grand, I would have had a _much_ more exciting evening.”

            “It’s not just the photos, Lex,” Nixon assured him. “Can’t get the negatives these days, you know. Digital photos--the person who took them could have… _tons_ of copies lying around, ready to splash them all over the web in case they don’t make the friendly neighborhood tabloid. So I thought, you might want a little extra insurance against that.”

            Lex paused. “You got his name. Address,” he decided. It wasn’t a question.

            “Not that I’m advocating anything like violence or intimidation, of course,” Nixon went on slimily, “but a little blackmail…”

            “Roger, have you been up _all night_ working on this?” Lex was actually a little bit impressed. What that man wouldn’t do for cash, and the chance to humiliate someone who didn’t _have_ cash…

            “Lex, it’s four in the afternoon,” Nixon pointed out. “I’ve been working on it all _day_. But then,” he added smartly, “I wasn’t up until three am drinking, doing drugs, and dancing with a sixteen-year-old girl.”

            “Well, neither was I, Roger,” Lex countered. “We weren’t _dancing_.”

            “Glad to get that clarified.”

            “And you left out the part where we ate hamburgers.”

            “I got a picture of the part where the two of you hop into your car and speed off into the night,” Nixon pointed out, “presumably to do things that are illegal in several states.”

            “Like eat hamburgers.”

            “Call it what you will,” the journalist replied dismissively. “But from where I’m sitting—and that’s, you know, _facing_ these photos—this isn’t the kind of publicity you want.”

            Lex sighed again. He should have known that little voice was right when it said inviting Lucy to a nightclub was a bad idea. It seemed so obvious now, when it was daylight and he wasn’t… drinking and doing drugs. Maybe all those public service announcements had been right after all. Or maybe sometimes you just had to _pay_ for your fun. “I _don’t_ want that kind of publicity,” Lex agreed. “But they can’t possibly be that bad. I mean, really—nothing happened.”

            “Lex, I don’t really care, I ain’t your daddy, you know,” Nixon told him lightly.

            “Thank G-d for that,” Lex breathed, and he meant it.

            “But this particular photo is really quite cute—you’re getting felt up by a noted society nymphomaniac and her girlfriend, and Lucy’s standing right there with ‘Smallville High’ written across her a-s.”

            “Oh, G-d.”

            “The composition and the lighting are very artistic.”

            “You want your money today, Roger?” The answer was always yes. “Then get those photos to me.”

            “Shall I meet you at Luthor Plaza?” Nixon smirked.

            “No,” Lex told him shortly, grabbing his jacket. “We’ll meet someplace else.”

 

******

 

            C.J. waited nervously outside the Oval Office, clutching the manila envelope in what she hoped was a casual manner. Every once in a while Charlie would glance up at her from his desk, as if to make sure she hadn’t tried to steal a pen or something like that, she thought. She gave him a haughty look the next time she caught him watching her. He was not intimidated.

            She narrowly avoided jumping when Leo opened the door to the Oval and motioned for her to come in. She could hear the President talking on the phone still, his Japanese smooth and flawless, at least to her completely untrained ears. C.J. had once spectacularly failed a Spanish class, so what did _she_ know about foreign languages.

            “He’s just finishing up,” Leo whispered, shutting the door behind her.

            Turning in his chair the President spotted them and waved them over. He laughed a little into the phone, tossed off a few more phrases, then added, “No, thank _you_ , Mr. Prime Minister. _Sayonara_.” With that he hung up the phone and rolled his eyes, pleasant expression dropping away.

            “How’s Prime Minister Konitsu today, sir?” Leo asked, as a warm-up.

            “Well, he’s still an idiot, and unfortunately a healthy one,” the President grimaced. “Leo, I’m thinking of annexing Japan. I could run it a h—l of a lot better than this a-s. Can you get me some numbers from Defense?” Leo stared at his Commander in Chief, trying to assess the expression on his face. After a moment, the President smirked a little and assured him, “I’m kidding, Leo.”

            “Really, sir?” Some days Leo just wasn’t sure.

            The President looked as though he were reconsidering his statement. “Well, I guess I don’t need the numbers _right_ away,” he finally decided. Leo and C.J. glanced at each other and the President rolled his blue-grey eyes. Sometimes these people just couldn’t take a joke. He switched subjects. “C.J., did you have something for me?”

            “Um, yes, sir,” his Press Secretary replied, a bit anxiously. She fumbled with the envelope in her hands. “Sir, this arrived in my mailbox this morning. No one else has seen it, except Leo of course.”

            “Well, now I’m intrigued,” the President told her, straightening in his chair. “What is it?”

            C.J. glanced at Leo, who gave her an encouraging look, so she opened the envelope and pulled out a large photograph that she passed across the desk to the President. Knowing his expression was being watched anxiously, he scanned the picture thoroughly, then let a small smile creep onto his face.

            C.J. couldn’t yet read his smiles well enough to know if this was an amused smile, or a “heads are gonna roll” smile. Her money was on the latter, but she wasn’t betting much. The President flipped the photo over to see if anything was written on the back—nothing was—then stared at the colorful image again. “No indication of where it came from, I presume?” he asked rhetorically.

            “There’s a typed address label on the front,” C.J. shrugged, “and the postmark is D.C.. Not much help.”

            “It’s got to be a warning,” Leo speculated. “Possibly from Jorgensen, over the airline thing, or maybe someone in the oil industry—“

            “If I don’t know who it’s from,” the President asked easily, “how do I know whose demands to meet?”

            C.J. and Leo shared another glance. “I don’t think they _have_ demands, Mr. President,” the Press Secretary replied. “I think they’re just showing us what’s going to run in tomorrow’s _Post_.” She paused, waiting for her words to sink in, but the man behind the desk seemed to be deep in thought over the photo. “It’s not much time, sir,” she prompted carefully, “but if we could give it to some experts, show that it’s a fake—“

            The President interrupted her by pressing his intercom button. “Charlie?”

            “Yes, sir?”

            “Find my wife and ask her to come in here, please.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “It’s not a fake.”

            C.J. looked a bit startled. “Excuse me, sir?”

            “It’s not a fake,” President Luthor repeated. He laid the photo on his desk and gazed at it almost fondly. “The club is Liquid Blue. It doesn’t exist anymore, which is rather unfortunate. The turnover rate of exclusive nightclubs in Metropolis is alarmingly high.” He shook his head at the injustice of it all. Leo and C.J. checked each other’s reactions and found that they both wore expressions of worried surprise. “The handsome young man in the center of the photo is, of course, me,” Lex continued with a smirk. “The woman... kissing me was, at the time, the foremost socialite nymphomaniac in Metropolis. The woman next to _her_ was her then-girlfriend. And the... person with her back to the camera—presumably the focal point of the composition, what with the prominent ‘Smallville High School’ sweatshirt tied around her waist—is a 16-year-old girl I invited to go clubbing with me.”

            Lex enjoyed the long silence that followed his revelation. He wondered how much of it his staffers spent running spin strategies through their minds, and how much they spent wishing they had gone to work for the _other_ guy instead. He smirked again. Too late now. The American people had spoken. Or someone had, anyway.

            There was a light tapping on the door to the Oval Office and Charlie stuck his head in. “The First Lady to see you, sir.”

            “Send her in.” He liked Lucy being referred to as ‘the First Lady.’ Sometimes he even called her that when they were alone, but she usually ended up giggling and ruining the mood.

            Charlie moved aside gracefully and Lucy started to wander in, but stopped abruptly when she spotted Leo and C.J.. “G-d, I’m sorry,” Lex told her dryly, “did I get you out of a high-level meeting with your staffers?”

            Her cheeks went a little pink and she hurriedly tried to straighten her clothes up a bit. Unfortunately when you were wearing sunflower-covered pajama pants, a matching tank top with spaghetti straps, and a bright yellow cardigan, you didn’t have much to work with. She tried buttoning up the cardigan anyway, much to Lex’s disappointment. “Charlie didn’t say there was anyone else _here_ ,” she pointed out a bit huffily. “I’m not even wearing shoes,” Lucy added with despair. “G-d, isn’t there some kind of law about having to wear shoes in the Oval Office?”

            “Actually,” her husband assured her, “I was just talking to Leo about issuing a presidential proclamation _forbidding_ shoes from the Oval Office entirely. So I think you’re still in a grey area, legally.” Lex could see she was thinking some reply about how he was _used_ to legal grey areas, but she decided not to say it in front of his staff. Which was too bad, really. “Come here, I want you to see something.”

            C.J. tried not to look alarmed as Lucy approached the desk. Leo had told her, obliquely, that the President liked to be totally open with his wife about the shady events in his past, which was good because there were a _lot_ of shady events. C.J. had thought—perhaps foolishly, she now realized--that they had all been dredged up during the campaign. Apparently there were yet more lurking out there. “Well, that’s why I need the best Press Secretary in the world,” candidate Luthor had told her with that crooked, charming smile, back when she had been working for the “Citizens for Luthor” campaign for only a few weeks.

            Lex maneuvered his wife around the desk to sit on his lap. It drove the staff crazy when he did that, but what the h—l did he care, she was his _wife_ after all. He tapped the picture on his desk to draw her attention to it and watched her face—first she frowned, then her eyes widened in shock as recognition dawned. “Holy s—t,” she murmured. “I didn’t know there were _pictures!_ ”

            Lex decided to mention the fact that he’d paid the _late_ Roger Nixon quite a bit of money to catch said pictures, and the photographer, before they could go public, at a later time. Perhaps a time when there were not so many government employees present. “Someone was very resourceful,” he commented instead. “And very patient, to have held this back all these years.”

            Lucy looked up in alarm. “Don’t you know who it came from?”

            Lex shrugged. “The list of suspects is pretty long.”

            “Huh.” She examined the photo again. “Those shadows really make my butt look big.”

            “No, they don’t,” Lex countered, rolling his eyes.

            “Wait a minute,” C.J. sputtered. “That’s _you_ in the photo? Uh, Ma’am?” She felt very strange calling a younger woman ‘Ma’am.’

            “Oh, yeah, that’s me,” Lucy told her, looking at Lex to see if she’d spilled something she shouldn’t have. He gave her a little smile, which she took as encouragement. “Yeah, with the ‘Smallville High’ on my rear. It was some club in Metropolis... geez, like, fourteen years ago? Something like that.”

            “Okay,” C.J. said after a moment, and this time Lex could tell she was definitely strategizing. “Whoever sent this photo must have known the circumstances under which it was taken, and therefore, the identity of the girl—er, the future First Lady...”

            “Sir,” Leo began delicately, “can we assume this club was 21 and over?”

            “You can assume that,” Lex agreed.

            “Could we speculate that underage consumption of alcoholic beverages may have taken place?” he persisted, looking at the President and not the First Lady. “Perhaps other illegal substances were involved?”

            “ _I_ didn’t take anything,” Lucy protested. “And I didn’t drink, either. I was still on my medication at the time—if I had mixed anything with that it might have triggered a psychotic episode, and I wouldn’t risk _that_.” She poked her husband in the chest. “ _You_ , on the other hand...”

            “Leo,” Lex pointed out with an indulgent smile, “my proclivities are _excessively_ documented. Frankly I think the _only_ thing people will find shocking about the photo is the fact that nothing shocking came of it. Lucy met me at the club, we ate hamburgers, we went to sleep.”

            “In separate buildings?” Leo asked hopefully.

            “Not quite,” Lex answered easily.

            Lucy smacked his shoulder. “You dope, don’t lead them on. Nothing happened. Which just goes to show you weren’t _that_ drunk anyway.” She peered at the photo again. “Although, you _did_ give up a night with those _two_ women to eat hamburgers with me. So maybe you were kind of high after all.” She smiled at Lex, and Lex smiled back at her, and Leo and C.J. suddenly felt like their presences were no longer required or, in fact, desired. And they weren’t going to protest leaving too much.

            “So, um,” C.J. cleared her throat one last time, “sir? What would you like us to do with this?”

            The look the President gave her definitely said, ‘Are you still _here_?’ “Let it come out whenever,” he told her with a shrug. “There’s nothing in it to worry me. Go ahead and tell the press the truth. I’ve found that’s always a good policy.” Even his own wife couldn’t keep her expression straight for _that_ line.

            “Yes, sir,” C.J. replied. “Thank you, sir.” Lex loved it when people said ‘thank you’ at the end of conversations with him, like just a word from him, a moment of his time, was gift enough.

            “Thank you, sir,” Leo echoed. “Ma’am.”

            “Good-bye,” Lucy told the two staffers politely. As soon as they were alone in the large room she turned to her husband and gave him a stern look.

            “What?” Lex asked innocently, pulling her closer.

            “Who exactly would keep this photo for _fourteen years_ before releasing it to the press?” she asked pointedly.

            Lex grinned wolfishly at her. “Clearly someone who wanted to undermine my authority as, you know, President of the United States by dredging up yet more tawdry events from my past.” He started to unbutton the vibrant cardigan.

            “You don’t seem very worried,” Lucy observed, trying to keep her head clear for at least a few more lines.

            “I don’t think the American public is going to get too worked up over an old photo of me and my future bride,” Lex commented, nibbling along her jaw. “In fact”—his lips slid down her neck—“if it’s played right, I think it may actually _boost_ my approval ratings.”

            A slow grin spread across Lucy’s face that was not _entirely_ related to what her husband’s lips—and hands too—were doing. “Lex, I don’t want to know _any_ more,” she decided. “Plausible deniability...”


End file.
